Summary
Ukraine’s military intelligence reported finding Western-made components inside Russian decoy drones, used in recent swarm attacks to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses.
Dubbed “Parody,” these decoys are cheaper than Iran’s Shahed-136 drones but can mimic their radar signatures, creating fake targets to distract defenses.
Russia reportedly launched over 2,000 drones last month, half of which were decoys, with some crashing in Moldova, raising regional security concerns.
Despite sanctions, Western technology continues to appear in Russian weapons, complicating efforts to restrict Moscow’s drone capabilities.
The Ukrainian government has a vast list of all the electronics they are finding in Russian weapons and where they came from. It’s actually pretty impressive.
https://war-sanctions.gur.gov.ua/en/components
Looking at that list, most things look like very basic components that can be easily found on aliexpress, and thus in China, and thus probably easy to get for Russia. Are we going to forbid selling those components to China or how is this supposed to work? (genuinely curious)
That is basically how ITAR export controls work, but only for much more complicated weapon parts like nukes and fighter jets. It’s basically impossible to stop the flow of stuff that any country can make. The parts in this article would likely fall under EAR99, explicitly allowed to sell to any not-embargoed country.
Source: was a business area export representative (BAER) and yes I know this is an oversimplification
I think there’s just no way to avoid middle men here. Not with a global supply chain.
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As some old guy said, “Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.”
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Ferengi rule of aquisition #34: War is good for business.
#35: Peace is good for business
Have we tried that yet?
Have you tried asking that in Kremlin?
Unfortunately peace is not good for business.
Nice! Would be funny if companies were fined by how much of their shit made it there.
Someone probably should the governmental stick up their ass for this. I’m pretty sure all the parts that end up in Russian arsenal have export restrictions and should, in theory, have strict oversight. You can’t just export into another country and forget about it. If those parts want to be to be exported into another country that information should come back to the seller(or the government agency, don’t really remember the specifics) who then have to give clearance for that and any future exports. But you can’t keep track of under the table deals. Hopefully this gets investigated and justice is served but I don’t have much faith.